The Great & the Small

by Andrea Torrey (A. T. ) Balsara

Books were one of the few things Ananda and her dad could talk about anymore. She certainly couldn’t talk to him about his job—at least not without causing the start of World War III.

  Humming tunelessly, Ananda slowly walked down each aisle, her fingers bumping along the book spines. In the “Art books, Used” section, her fingers stopped on Sketch What You See. She pulled it out of the leaning stack and read the back:

  Learn to see things as they actually are, not how you think they are.

  “Did you find something?” asked Tom, coming up behind her.

  Ananda held out the book.

  He read the back, nodded, then held out a thick paperback. “I found this.”

  Ananda took it. A wavy-haired man smiled out from the cover, gazing into the distance as if he were seeing heaven itself. “Who is he?”

  “Josef Stalin. One of the biggest mass-murderers in history. Want to borrow it?”

  Good non-fiction was irresistible to her, like candy to a child. “Of course!” she said.

  “I thought so. Just don’t tell your mom!”

  Ananda laughed. She widened her eyes and mimed locking her lips together and pocketing the key.

  Having bought the books, Tom dug in his pocket and pulled out a handwritten list. “I almost forgot why we came here in the first place! Your mother would not be impressed if I forgot the things on her list.” They waded back into the sea of people and grabbed fresh cinnamon rolls from the bakery, which they ate as they wandered slowly in the direction of the main market. It was a beautiful day; the sun was shining, slanting through the clouds like a Michelangelo painting. Off to the side, a street musician sawed away at an old battered guitar while his partner played an antique washboard with thimbles on her fingers. For a moment, everything was perfect.

  As they moved past the market’s main entrance near the bronze gargoyle, there was some kind of disturbance. There was always a crowd there, but this was different. An old man was being pulled up from the ground, his cane handed to him. Many hands helped him onto a nearby bench.

  Ananda and Tom stopped near an idling van where buckets of daisies, roses, and dahlias were being unloaded. The smell of fumes mixed with the fragrance of flowers. Typical Middle-Gate, thought Ananda. Sweet with the sour.

  Tom squinted at the list. “Could your mom write any smaller? Let’s see…bread, eggs, cheese—”

  A loud crash boomed from the fish stalls, making them both jump.

  A huge man wearing rubber boots and a plastic apron came charging down the aisle. “You filthy piece of… I’m gonna get you!” He was focused on something on the ground and didn’t seem to notice that he was charging straight at them.

  Ananda’s father braced himself, toothpick though he was, in front of her. But the fishmonger barrelled past, following a streak of white and grey. A mouse! The man raised his boot, slammed it down on the mouse.

  Ananda gasped. So did others in the crowd. The mouse squirmed in pain, its back paw crushed. A dark splotch of blood bloomed on the pavement.

  The man lifted his boot again.

  Everything seemed to slow down for Ananda. “Stop!” she roared. She pushed by her dad and jumped between the man and the mouse. Blood pounded in her ears and her heart thrummed. She held up her hands to block him and shouted, “Leave it the Hell alone!”

  The man stumbled backward, tripping over his own enormous boot. He pulled himself up to his full height and glowered down at her. His face was as red as boiled lobster, and a sheen of sweat glistened on his fat upper lip and quivering jowls. He sneered.

  “What’s your problem, you stupid kid?” he snarled.

  Ananda was too pumped with adrenaline to be cowed by this mastodon. She rose to her full five-foot-one-inch height and glared up at the giant. “I’m not the troublemaker here, you bloody, murderous jerk! What gives you the right to hurt an innocent animal?”

  “Are you crazy?” the guy sputtered.

  Ananda wanted to sink her fist into his fat ham of a face. “No, you’re crazy! Torturing an innocent mouse who hasn’t done you any harm—ouch!” She was suddenly yanked to one side.

  Her skinny father, with his thick glasses and mop of dark brown hair, stepped forward, putting himself between her and the fish-selling Goliath. Tom pushed his glasses up his nose. “Let’s all just calm down…”

  Giant Fish-Guy began ranting, waving his meaty hands, drops of sweat flying off him like a dog shaking itself after a dip in the pond. Tom’s voice began to rise.

  Leaving her dad to it, Ananda swooped around and crouched on the ground before the mouse. It was white with grey markings. It looked like it had a little cape. It was still moving, its long, pink tail flickering like a groggy snake.

  “Come on, little guy,” whispered Ananda. “You’ve got to get up now.”

  The small creature seemed to know it had been given a reprieve. It picked itself up, slowly peeled its crushed back paw from the pavement, gave itself a small shake, and lolloped away, holding its crushed paw to its belly. It made it past the gargoyle statue. It had just leaped onto the column when Fish-Guy caught sight of it. He swore and lumbered after it.

  “Leave it alone!” screamed Ananda. She went to run after him but was stopped by an iron grip on her arm. “Stop him, somebody!” she shrieked.

  By now, the entire market had stopped to gawk. The mouse was halfway up the column. Cursing, Fish-Guy hopped on one foot and ripped off a boot. He threw it. The boot bounced off the column.

  The mouse kept climbing.

  Fish-Guy threw the other boot. Missed!

  Ananda cheered as the mouse slid over the rooftop. “Yes! The mouse got away!” She jumped up and down, clapping, and swung around. Dozens of people were staring, jaws flapped open. She froze. In the crowd she saw one of the guys from her school. He looked like Ed the Hyena from The Lion King. His mouth was in perma-sneer mode, and his head thrust forward on his neck like someone was leading him by his pimply nostrils. He shook his head at her. “Loser,” he mouthed, and laughed. She’d seen his type a million times. A coward until he smelled blood. There was no way he was going to bully her.

  Although prickling sweat had broken out all over her body, Ananda thrust out her chin. She smiled—a bright, fake mask. “Good!” she called to the crowd. “The mouse is safe. All’s well that ends well, right?” She curled her mouth into a sarcastic grin and stared down the hyena.

  His quarry having shown some backbone, Ed the Hyena sauntered off in search of softer targets. Ananda watched him leave then swung around. She covered her face with her hands, breathing hard, grateful that her long, dark hair helped curtain her face.

  She was jarred back into the moment when she heard the rubbery tromp of the fishmonger behind her and felt his sizzle-stare on the back of her head. A few choice words were thrown her way.

  “Yeah, well right back at you!” she called, dropping her hands and balling them into fists.

  The everyday hum of the market slowly came back as if nothing had disturbed it. Ananda sighed. Two brutes beaten off in the space of a minute.

  Her father took off his glasses and wiped the lenses with his shirt. Sweat had broken out along his forehead. He swallowed, shaking his head. “Well, that was quite a show!”

  “Yeah,” she breathed. “But I saved a helpless mouse from being squashed like a bug. It got away, and that’s what counts.”

  “Ananda,” said Tom, rubbing his eyes wearily. “That was a rat. A wild rat. Probably a descendent of an escaped pet by the looks of it, but it’s feral now.”

  Ananda’s mouth had dropped open like it was on a greased hinge. Eww. A rat? So that’s why its tail was naked and bristly! In spite of herself, a shiver rolled down her spine. Yes, she loved animals and felt it was her duty to protect them against cruelty. But in spite of herself, rats creeped Ananda out. Their buggy eyes looked like they were going to pop out, and
their tails were like fat, bleached worms.

  Her father was watching her.

  Shrugging, she thrust out her chin and said, “Rats have rights too, you know!”

  “Wild rats spread disease, Ananda.” Tom’s voice rose. “And this is a market where people buy and sell food. We can’t have vermin infesting this place, or we’ll all get sick!”

  Ananda raised her eyebrows and stared wide-eyed at the ground. Her dad thought what she’d done was wrong. He’d been embarrassed by her. And she’d only tried to do what was right.

  Hot tears betrayed her, spilling down her nose and staining the front of her shirt. Anger reared up like a rogue wave. She snarled, “Of course you don’t care about a poor, innocent rat. You kill rats all the time at your so-called work!”

  The blood ran from her dad’s face as he did a sharp intake of breath. He stared at her with rounded eyes.

  “Really, Ananda? That’s how you see my work?”

  Thomas Blake was a cancer researcher. Part of his work involved experimenting on rats.

  To Ananda, he purposefully infected them, cut into them, tortured them, all in the name of science. It was crap.

  He was still staring at her, open-mouthed.

  She looked down to hide the sudden burning in her cheeks. Silence mounted between father and daughter. Ananda raised her eyes and stared at him. A razor-sharp smile curved her mouth. She shrugged. “So?”

  Tom closed his eyes for a moment. He said quietly, “There are a lot of people who are alive because of my cancer research. I don’t…enjoy dissecting animals, and I don’t let them suffer any more than I have to. But it saves human lives. That is what’s important to me. It could even save your life one day.”

  He sighed, put a hand on her shoulder. It felt heavy. She shrugged it off.

  “Okay, have it your way,” he said. “I’m still getting the stuff on the list, but in the meantime you can sit here read this.” He stuffed a folded newspaper under her arm, turned, and walked away. He called over his shoulder, “I’ll be back to get you in thirty minutes.”

  Ananda watched him disappear into the crowd. She sat down on a nearby bench but took in nothing of the market moving around her. She kept seeing the mouse, the bully of a man, and the look in her father’s eyes. She’d done the right thing. So why did she feel like someone had scraped out a hollow place inside of her? The paper stayed under her arm, forgotten.

  The bus ride home was a grim test of endurance. Neither of them acknowledged the other, both of them suddenly fascinated with looking out the window.

  In the safety of her room, Ananda collapsed on her bed. The paper her dad had given her was crumpled underneath her. Contorting herself, she pulled it out and flung it toward the garbage. It landed in a flutter, the front page facing her. Half of it was taken up by a huge photo.

  Ananda frowned. She reached down and picked up the page. The photo showed rows of wrapped bodies, stacked like the sausages she’d just seen at the market. A single person stood in the middle, covered in a white suit and mask, hands outstretched as if pleading for help. The caption read, “Virulent Bubonic Plague Strain Terrorizes India and is Feared to Have Already Spread to Neighbouring Countries. Scientists Baffled by the New Strain of an Old Enemy.”

  Wild rats carried fleas, which carried plague bacilli. Her hand covered her mouth. Ananda knew from her history books what had happened the last time a strain of the plague “terrorized” people.

  The Black Death. The Great Mortality. The Bubonic Plague.

  It was back.

  “Bloody hell,” she said.

  THREE

  “God tests those he loves so that they may become stronger.”

  William Zouche, Archbishop of York, 1348

  Blurred, dim shapes move around him. He noses along warm fur, following the smell of milk. He has been here before. She licks his ear, grooms his fur. But then the warmth is gone. Sharp noises bounce around him. He gropes blindly in the nest. There is a tug on his paw…

  “Fin! Fin! Wake up! Oh, wake up!” Scratch whimpered. “We’ve got to get out of here—we’ve got to get out of here now!”

  Fin moaned, opening his eyes a sliver.

  Scratch babbled, “Oh Fin! Your foot! It’s a mess! They’ll find out. I know they’ll find out. Can’t hide it. Oh, why can’t you follow the rules for once? Just once!” He burst into a flurry of weeping.

  “Don’t worry…my uncle…”

  “The Chairman won’t help me, Fin. I’m Mister Nobody from the Lower Tunnels. No one to help me,” Scratch sobbed. “I’ll be…I’ll be collected!”

  When Fin began to protest, Scratch sobbed louder. “Collected! I’ll never see my sister again! Oh, what’s she going to say? Zumi told me not to be friends with you…”

  Fin shook his head to clear it. “What?”

  “Trouble!” said Scratch. “That’s what she called you. Now I know why! Now I’m going to be collected!” Scratch burst into fresh tears.

  Fin’s paw had been crushed and Scratch was crying over Collections that didn’t even exist? “I told you that there’s no such—”

  Scratch nipped him hard on the ear.

  “Ouch!” cried Fin. “You bit me?”

  “Don’t you—don’t you dare tell me,” spluttered Scratch, his eyes narrowed at Fin. “Mister High-and-Mighty, you have no idea—”

  “Okay, okay. We’ll…we’ll say that I fell.”

  Scratch wept. “No one will believe you. Especially not…not…the Chairman! This is all your fault!” He nipped Fin on the rump.

  “Ouch! Stop biting me! Papa doesn’t know about this. And if you can calm down, he won’t ever know.”

  Scratch sat up, blinking at Fin through his tears. “He w-won’t?”

  “No, but our stories need to be exactly the same. We’ll say I was running along the ceiling pipe that runs over the market, doing surveillance—”

  “Surv…what?”

  “Sur-vei-llance.” Fin wanted to scream, his crushed paw throbbed so. But he said slowly, “It means I was watching the two-legs, seeing what traps they were setting for us. So, I was helping the Tunnels.”

  Scratch looked puzzled.

  “The rules said we can’t go in the two-leg territory,” explained Fin. “Two-legs don’t run under the ceiling.”

  Hope flickered in Scratch’s eyes. “That’s good! That’s good, Fin!” His face darkened. “But your paw…”

  “Ummm…I lost my balance on the ceiling pipe!” said Fin.

  Scratch brightened.

  “I lost my balance on the pipe, because of my curled foot.”

  Scratch nodded eagerly.

  “And…and then I slipped and landed wrong and some ugly two-leg stepped on it. So I won’t even mention you were there.”

  Scratch’s expression was blank for a moment as he took in what Fin had said. Then a smile spread across his face.

  “Yeah?” said Fin. “It’s good?”

  “Yeah!” said Scratch, bobbing his head. “It’s good! It’s good, Fin!”

  “Great,” sighed Fin, slumping down, “because I’m going to sleep now. My paw is killing me.”

  Scratch poked him with his nose. “No you don’t. Get up, get up! Can’t stay here! The ugly two-legs will climb up. They’ll finish you off for sure!”

  “How do you know they’re ugly when you’re as blind as a naked mole rat?”

  Scratch gave him another bite on the rump. “I just know, okay, Mister Fin?”

  “Ouch! Okay! Okay!”

  Fin’s nest was in the Upper Burrows, but he could hardly walk, so Scratch steered him to his own small nest in the Lowers, tucked within the belly of the market.

  Neither of them realized they were being watched.

  FOUR

  “With death all around, we are stirred to be watchful.”
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  Thomas Brinton, Bishop of Rochester, 1375

  “Why did you bring him here, Scratch?”

  The voice woke Fin. It was female and sounded angry. Fin was curled up in Scratch’s nest, which lay deep below the market, deeper than he’d ever been.

  The burrow was tiny, located at the bottom of a tunnel so dotted with burrow holes that it looked like Swiss cheese. The bedding was damp, and the burrow smelled sour, a little like sewage. But when they had finally limped in, Scratch insisted Fin stay.

  “It’s not nice, like yours,” Scratch had babbled, “but it’s close. Closer than your nest in the Upper Tunnels, and you’re hurt, so now you’re going to do as Mister Scratch says!”

  Fin had nodded, too tired to worry about the smell. Hobbling to the pile of rags, he’d dropped to sleep.

  “This is my nest, too,” Scratch now said. His voice sounded muffled. “I can bring whoever I want here, so there!”

  “But he’s the Chairman’s nephew! You’re too trusting. You think because he says he’s your friend that he won’t turn you in?”

  “He won’t, Zumi. He won’t! Fin isn’t like that, he’s—”

  “Like what?” said Fin, lifting himself up. A brown female rat squealed with surprise. Except for her colour Scratch’s sister looked identical to Scratch. She stared at Fin, open-mouthed, her pink nose turning even pinker.

  “Didn’t your mother teach you not to spy?” she snapped.

  “My mother is dead,” said Fin. “I’m surprised you didn’t know that, since you seem to know everything else about me. And I wasn’t spying. I was just lying here.”

  Zumi frowned. “Maybe, maybe not.”

  “Zumi!” said Scratch. “He’s Papa’s nephew. His nephew! So be nice.”

  “Do I have a choice?” She looked away, shaking her head.

  “Hey,” said Fin, “I’m not here to cause trouble. I had a run-in with a two-leg and—”

  “And put all of us in danger!” said Zumi. “Why couldn’t you just stay where you belong? You have no business being down here.”